Quantum oscillation of thermally activated conductivity in a monolayer WTe2 -like excitonic insulator

Abstract

Recently, quantum oscillation of the resistance in insulating monolayer WTe$_2$ was reported. An explanation in terms of gap modulation in the hybridized Landau levels of an excitonic insulator was also proposed by one of us. However, the previous picture of gap modulation in the Landau levels spectrum was built on a pair of well nested electron and hole Fermi surfaces, while the monolayer WTe$_2$ has one hole and two electron Fermi pockets with relative anisotropy. Here we demonstrate that for system like monolayer WTe$_2$, the excitonic insulating state arising from the coupled one hole and two electron pockets possesses a finite region in interaction parameter space that shows gap modulation in a magnetic field. In this region, the thermally activated conductivity displays the $1/B$ periodic oscillation and it can further develop into discrete peaks at low temperature, in agreement with the experimental observation. We show that the relative anisotropy of the bands is a key parameter and the qunatum oscillations decrease rapidly if the anisotropy increases further than the realistic value for monolayer WTe$_2$.